Baseball In Sydney

Baseball is not a game associated with Australia, but there is a thriving community across Australia, and the game has a long history in this country.

Baseball arrived in Australia with the influx of migration associated with the 1850’s gold rush, brought by the Americans who came seeking their fortune. There was an attempt to play baseball at Yarra Park in Melbourne in the late 1860’s but the game had to be abandoned because crowds arriving for the Australian Rule football game got in the way! So it was left to the Surry Baseball Club in Sydney to be responsible for Australia’s first series of competitive games, which were played at the Sydney Cricket Ground in mid-1878. A few years later, in 1882, Americans now living in Australia formed a Sydney Baseball Club. The NSW Baseball Association was created in 1885 by the US Consul of the time, Gilderoy Wells Griffin.

Promoter Albert Goodwill Spalding included Australia in his baseball World Tour, and the Chicago White Sox and a team of all-Americans played exhibition matches in 1888 and 1889. A member of one of the teams, Harry Simpson left the tour to stay in Australia and traveling the country, he established baseball teams in towns across Australia, including Melbourne, Adelaide, Broken Hill and Sydney. He also set up the NSW Baseball League in 1894.

Redfern were the inaugural winners of the NSW Major League, played for the first time in 1899. In 1911, the league expanded to three grades and while there have been exceptions to this across the first half of the 20th century because of the two World Wars, this remains the case today.

For a long time in NSW, baseball was a winter game but in 1974 it became a summer sport, providing better weather conditions for players and fans alike.

In 1981, a Club Championship was introduced. Auburn were declared the best performing club from the three grades in that first year, and they went to win another eight times across the next twelve years.